I've got the 'fastest growing THINGY ever', boasts Google+ chief

You could be in Plus and not even know it

Google veep Vic Gundotra has described Google+ as "the fastest-growing network thingy ever." He claimed that 135 million people were now actively using it, while 500 million users have been signed up to the site.

He added that 235 million peeps had used Google+ to do things like "hanging out" with their chums in Gmail.

The ad giant has of course been slotting Google+ into many parts of the company's estate over the past year, forcing users to have a presence on the site if they want to subscribe to YouTube or Gmail, for example.

Newcomers to Google's "free" online products will find themselves automatically signed into Google+ and have to proactively then turn the "thingy" off. Hardly surprising then, to see that 500 million people are now profiled on Google+, even if they're still mostly not hanging around in there.

More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google (+1'ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search...), and 135 million are active in just the stream.

Put another way, 365 million people don't engage directly with Google+.